Metroland

A dazzling entertainer

New Yorker

One of the best accounts of clever English schoolboyhood I've read

Times Educational Supplement

Consummately elegant

Sunday Times

If all works of fiction were as thoughtful, as subtle, as well constructed, and as funny as Metroland there would be no more talk of the death of the novel

New Statesman

I was captivated from the first page. I cannot remember when I enjoyed a first novel more

Nina Bawden, Daily Telegraph

One would have to look very hard to find a wryer, more lovingly detailed account of intellectual and sexual innocence abroad

Jay Parini, New York Times

Flighty, playful… Barnes succeeds in vividly recreating teenage precociousness, particularly what it feels like to be a young male encountering love and sex

Los Angeles Times

A rare and unusual first novel

William Boyd, London Magazine

A very funny, touching first novel. It has a hard comic edge to it that is logical and at the same time extremely diverting

Spectator

An alert, witty, unpredictable novel which brings a sharp fresh eye to bear on English character and English compromises

Observer

Metroland is a delicious book, sharp and witty and observant

The Listener

He writes perceptively about the shift from self-absorbed teenager to adult.

The Times

Irony and imagery are deployed with a finesse even Flaubert wouldn't wince at...consumately elegant

Sunday Times